Save a tree a year (While saving money and Time)

If you can save a tree a year, without making much effort, while saving some money, will you do it? Of course you will. I am confident of that. I believe people by their very nature love environment. That is why all of us are interested about renewable energy. We want to reduce pollution while saving some greenery. Both of these objectives are fulfilled when we decide to move to renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power or any other form like geo thermal energy. But today, I am not going to tell you how renewable energy can save our world, nor how much it will save us in cash. I am going to share you a story, which touched me. This is about a device, which has a great potential to save our environment.

A study shows you may save up to 700 lbs of paper per year if you read your newspaper electronically on an e-reader. In addition to this if you read your books on e- format you will save another 20-40 lbs of paper. This weight adds up to the amount of paper produced with a fully grown tree. Meaning if you shift yourself from paper based reading to e-reading, you will save a tree a year. Imagine if you are 30, and for the next fifty years of your life you will save 50 trees. Isn’t this fascinating to you? Best part is it is not going to end there.

Consider the amount of water and chemicals used to make the paper. Paper industry is one of the world’s most polluting industries. So you will save large amount of water with every document you read on your e-reader instead of traditional print format. In addition you will have less carbon footprint as you will be getting your documents in e-format as there is no need for transportation. So why people do not use these e-reading devices instead of traditional prints? Let me put some light on this subject. I will take Amazon Kindle as the base for e-readers. Although there are many readers out there, Kindle by far the most successful in terms of performance and its reach.

The first reason for less adoption of this method is because you have to buy these e-readers. A Kindle will cost you about $139. This will put most of the people off. But is it really cost? Yes, but you will benefit in the long run. How? Because most books delivered to Kindle is less expensive than their printed counterparts. You may save on your delivery charges too. Meaning with the time, your cost of acquiring the device will go off. Instead you will start saving some money.

Secondly people are so used to printed formats and they have a difficulty in going to the e-readers. This probably is a challenge tougher than our first challenge. But the good news is things are changing. Now Amazon sells more Kindle books than printed ones. So definitely these reading devices are coming to main stream. It is not only tech savvy people carry a kindle these days. It is being used by many like you and me.

Third reason, for me, personally the most important reason is the performance of the device. How long battery will last? How many books I can carry in this device? Do I need an internet connection to read books? Will it put strain on my eyes? All these are questions I had to answer before opt in to the e-reader. But fortunately I got all positive answers. Unlike my laptop or any other tablets like iPad which will last less than a day, your kindle will go on for two months between charging. Yes, no mistake. Two months. That is very impressive, I have to say. And a kindle can store 3000+ books in it. Again no mistake. That is a library in a single device. I am 100% satisfied. Kindle do not need the internet connection for you to read the books. You will need connection to buy the books and download them. Once you download you may go anywhere and read. Third, unlike your laptop or iPad or Galaxy Tab, you will not be reading on a normal LCD display, which has proven to cause eye strain if you tent to read long. Kindle has a very high contrast, special display very closer to the read paper. So no eye strain. And even you can read from broad sunlight. There are more features I like Kindle. But for now I will stop here. You may follow this link to learn more about them.

You can save money and time; you can carry thousands of books and journals with you, you can read with comfort all while saving precious water, while reducing CO2 emissions and while saving a tree a year. Isn’t that cool?

Please leave your comments below. You may get more information about Kindle and other similar reading devices by following this link.